Barry Peterson was only 4, but he can remember the last time he saw his father. It was at Walker Air Base in Roswell, N.M., 61 years ago. Capt. Walter “Pete” Peterson was about to depart on a classified mission in March 1951 to England. The family — Barry and his mother, Joni; brother, Garry; and baby sister, Marilyn — gathered to say goodbye.

“He kept coming back to hug us and coming back to hug us,” said Barry Peterson, an Amarillo attorney. “They were not optimistic about returning. My mother just said they were on a secret mission.”

The next day, on Good Friday, the C-124 transport went down about 600 miles off the coast of Ireland. The base chaplain came to see the family that night. A husband and father, 35, was missing in the Atlantic Ocean. Fears were confirmed: 53 on board were lost. That summer in Illinois, there was a funeral.

Sixty-one years to the day the plane went down, March 23, 2012, there was another funeral. This was a military memorial service under blue skies and 70-degree temperatures at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va.

Joni, who remarried in 1954 and settled in Pampa, died in 2004. But Barry was seated there along with Garry of Clarendon and Marilyn Crafton of Pampa. They were surrounded by about 30 relatives.

Five riders on horses and a riderless sixth horse pulled a flag-draped casket in a carriage. A 30-piece military band played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” an Air Force hymn and taps.

A rifle team fired a 21-gun salute. There was a moving eulogy from a Dover Air Force Base chaplain. The 21 shell casings placed in a suede bag and a folded U.S. flag were presented to the family.

“Just a really sweet, moving experience,” Crafton said. “I’m just so proud of Barry. He made this his mission.”

“It was overwhelming,” Barry said. “There was that sense of closure when the Air Force chaplain walked past us and thanked us for our father’s service.”

Arranging a funeral at Arlington was not as difficult compared to finding the cause and circumstances of the death of Capt. Peterson and the other 52 on that C-124 transport.

“My daughter said it was almost like a spy novel,” Crafton said. “It’s a mystery, and I don’t think we’ll ever know.”

Peterson had flown B-17 missions in World War II, including on D-Day at Caen, France. Later an Air Force Reserve, he was activated and part of a group of handpicked men from the nuclear 509th Bomb Group — some of the nation’s top nuclear military personnel — on a mission to form an air division in England. This was at the start of the Cold War and in the middle of the Korean War.

Adding to the intrigue is the C-124 stopped at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, La., to pick up Brig. Gen. Paul Cullen, an expert in spy photography. Their mission was to form the Strategic Air Command’s 7th Air Division, the tip of any U.S. strategic actions in Europe.

But the plane never made it. Nearing the coast of Ireland, a mayday stress call went out because of a fire in the cargo hold, which the accident report attributed to a lightning strike.

According to reports provided by families, including the Petersons, a crew aboard a B-29 from England saw flares and life rafts. Since the aicraft had no rescue equipment, the flyers radioed the coordinates and circled the downed crew until fuel on the B-29 ran low.

At daylight, a massive search ensued. Rescue ships, airplanes, weather ships, a British submarine and even the aircraft carrier, the USS Coral Sea, all were there. The Walker website read, “Ships and planes continued searching for the next several days, but not a single body was found. The men of the C-124 No. 49-0244 had quite simply disappeared.”

Families of the men and organizations have filed Freedom of Information Act requests to the State Department, CIA and FBI over the years. Inquiries were directed to the Air Force. The Air Force’s conclusion was the C-124 ditched in one piece, but nothing was found other than charred plywood and a briefcase.

Russian submarines and surface vessels were active in the area, Walker Air Base’s website said. The men on the C-124 would have been priority interrogation targets in those times. It simply adds to the mystery and underscores a sense of dread many felt. Crafton has a copy of a letter sent from one of the crewmen to his wife.

In part, it reads, “... The date of departure, route and mission are classified secret, so will have to wait to tell you about them ... We are all a little confused. Don’t know what to do about arranging our affairs ... I have arranged distribution of partnership in case of death ...”

“I believe there were survivors and the plane landed intact,” Crafton said. “This whole thing kind of got swept under the rug. So much doesn’t make sense.”

For Barry Peterson, he said he doesn’t want to guess, doesn’t want to assume. He’s not naive, but just doesn’t have, and probably never will have, factual information. Only circumstances make this seem like an old “X Files” episode.

“The mystery still lingers,” Peterson said, “but at this point, I can’t buy into with any honesty the Russian spy intrigue spinoff. At least I don’t want to think my father died in a Russian gulag under deplorable circumstances. I prefer to think he was asleep on that plane and killed instantly.”

The shrouds of mystery likely won’t be cleared. But, at the least, an Air Force captain ultimately received an honor he deserved on hallowed military grounds. And for the Peterson family, that is enough.

Jon Mark Beilue is a columnist for the Globe-News. He can be reached at jon.beilue@amarillo.com. His blog appears on amarillo.com. Twitter: @jonmarkbeilue.